Euphony OS w/Stylus player setup and issues thread

[Joerg D]

30 minutes ago, al2813 said:

421 is indeed very nice. Sounds a bit better than 108 to my taste. As I did the change I also tested again the Stylus player vs my (default) Roon server + Stylus EP. Maybe I should have not done that as again Stylus player sounds for me better, but am so addicted to the Roon GUI....oh dear....

Hello,
I have noticed today that Stylus sounds better than Roon + Stylus EP even after the update. 
After a few weeks of using Stylus, I also learned to appreciate the service.
After the update, the Hqplayer also runs with Stylus, not before .

Jörg
 

[di-fi]

2 hours ago, drjimwillie said:

.  I purchased the Optane stick and the PCIE adapter card to run the OS on. My intent is just to use it as NVME. When I went into bios to set up the boot drive I did not see an option for NVME. I contacted Supermicro and they told me that NVME will not work in this computer.  
However, considering that I have the Optane and the PCIE adapter card, I want to install it just to see if I can load some files on it, to see if they sound better than files loaded on my Nas.  

I recently did the same. 16Gb Optane card + adapter card in only PCIe slot of my (2017) SuperMicro mobo. Euphony will recognize the Optane card and create partitions and install the OS on it. BUT I could not get my system to boot from it (after removing usb drive). I also got in touch with SuperMicro, they confirmed there is no reason it should not work, just let the BIOS know there is a card in PCIe slot.  Please let me know if you get it to work. 

[Exocer]

Hey guys,

Where do I start with IRQ stuff? No GSTP visible in the IRQs. Working with 8 physical and 16 virtual cores, i9 9900K.

 

Here is how I have CPU Isolation configured: 0-1 systemd 2-3 nfm 2-3 stylus 4-5 dhcpcd 4-5 dbus-daemon 4-5 haveged 4-5 lvmetad 4-5 avahi-daemon 4-5 gstp 6-15 (This is sounding mighty good)

 

It isn't clear to me how to adjust IRQs. Can take this to PM if needed but interested in squeezing out more SQ if I can :)

 

Edit: Cleaned up the post because I got help from @ASRMichael (Thanks bud)

[edwardsean]

Well, I updated to 421 and, unfortunately, it looks like I have a minority report. I listened for several hours and went back to 102 to compare and stayed there. Why?

 

421 is missing the magic of 102....

 

I'm pausing to give ample time for heads to explode. I know, I know, if "musical" is an unhelpful term, then where does that leave words like "magical." So, let me 'splain.

 

I do like 421 better than 216/217. There is an increase in clarity and detail like 216/217, but it is smoother, without the etched brightness. Also, an increase in the definiteness of the imaging gives the render a sense of higher quality in general. 

 

However, as much as I prize precision, my goal is always a "creamy clarity." In my Dave-based system, 421 is still missing the fullness and fluidity of 102. 421 is smooth, but I still find the sound somewhat tight and small. On balance, 102 is missing 421's focus and is too diffuse, but there is simply this gorgeous analog texture and freedom of flow. It also renders with larger scale and dynamics to my ears. 

 

I know audio is often a compromise of these elements, but my favorite pieces, hardware or software, accomplish the impossibility of combining both. For me "creamy clarity" is where audio "magic" occurs. In my system, at least to my mind, 102 has more of it over 421. 

 

I very much dislike giving up the performance of 421 both sonically and in functionality.  I will try it again for a longer period of time, and see if my mind can settle into it. From experience I don't think letting it settle in my system will alter this impression. 

 

For now, I'm so glad to be able to retain 102.

 

 

 

 

 

[Topk]

1 hour ago, edwardsean said:

Well, I updated to 421 and, unfortunately, it looks like I have a minority report. I listened for several hours and went back to 102 to compare and stayed there. Why?

 

421 is missing the magic of 102....

 

I'm pausing to give ample time for heads to explode. I know, I know, if "musical" is an unhelpful term, then where does that leave words like "magical." So, let me 'splain.

 

I do like 421 better than 216/217. There is an increase in clarity and detail like 216/217, but it is smoother, without the etched brightness. Also, an increase in the definiteness of the imaging gives the render a sense of higher quality in general. 

 

However, as much as I prize precision, my goal is always a "creamy clarity." In my Dave-based system, 421 is still missing the fullness and fluidity of 102. 421 is smooth, but I still find the sound somewhat tight and small. On balance, 102 is missing 421's focus and is too diffuse, but there is simply this gorgeous analog texture and freedom of flow. It also renders with larger scale and dynamics to my ears. 

 

I know audio is often a compromise of these elements, but my favorite pieces, hardware or software, accomplish the impossibility of combining both. For me "creamy clarity" is where audio "magic" occurs. In my system, at least to my mind, 102 has more of it over 421. 

 

I very much dislike giving up the performance of 421 both sonically and in functionality.  I will try it again for a longer period of time, and see if my mind can settle into it. From experience I don't think letting it settle in my system will alter this impression. 

 

For now, I'm so glad to be able to retain 102.

 

 

 

 

 

I have to say I mostly agree with the above (as of now, since I’m not 100% decided yet). First impression you get on 421 is that it is high quality: excellent sounding, very refined, precise, with a nice/slight  touch of warmth added that was missing in the recent releases. A sense of relief that the sound came back with this version.
 

But in the end, 102, while definitely less focused and refined than 421, is fuller, more natural and coherent, in my opinion. 421 is a little bit more “hifi” sounding. 
 

421 is quite impressive sonically. But 102 is a bit more romantic and easy going - for my taste. It’s definitely worth trying both but I personally went back to 102.
 

I’m making tweaks in my system and will definitely try again 421 later on (I went twice back and forth already vs. 102) to make sure, since I do believe 421 has many good qualities and might be system dependent.

[mikicasellas]

How can I return to try 102, do i need to ask that to Zedjko ?

[Topk]

1 hour ago, mikicasellas said:

How can I return to try 102, do i need to ask that to Zedjko ?

Yes, he will send you a link with the image file. But you have a pm :-)

 

421 is absolutely a quality release and my advice is to try both. I’m pretty sure Željko has been working very hard on 421 and there are many nice new features. He definitely takes care of his customers.

[edwardsean]

Hey , before you go and do a fresh install with the image file, check Settings > System > System Info. 

 

You already have in image of your previous release. See what version you have. If It is prior to 216/217 you should just hit "revert" and see what you think. 216/217 is when the major sonic change occurred. The builds prior all have the "classic" Euphony sound. 102 is just one version of that. 

 

[edwardsean]

I agree with Topk that preference over builds is going to be somewhat dependent on individual systems, as well as tastes.

 

It would be fantastic if Željko could give us end-user access to some parameters to tune Euphony in terms of clarity/precision vs. romantic/fullness.

 

We can already do that a bit in terms of core isolation, but it doesn't seem to accomplish the kind of differences we're describing between builds. 

 

Anyway that would be a dream!

[flkin]

11 hours ago, drjimwillie said:

Hi Chopin - thank you for the reply.

How I have my OS loaded was going to be my second question.

 

The question I asked above is a basic navigation question. I don’t know my way around Linux/Euphony to find where a hard drive would be.  I am inferring from your response when you say file manager, that on a separate windows or Apple computer, when I see my server on the network, I should be able to navigate to any hard drive on it. Is that correct?

 

My current computer/server is in older CAPS Pipeline, with a supermicro motherboard and a Xeon  CPU. There is currently no hard drive installed and I am running the OS off a thumb drive.  I purchased the Optane stick and the PCIE adapter card to run the OS on. My intent is just to use it as NVME. When I went into bios to set up the boot drive I did not see an option for NVME. I contacted Supermicro and they told me that NVME will not work in this computer.  
However, considering that I have the Optane and the PCIE adapter card, I want to install it just to see if I can load some files on it, to see if they sound better than files loaded on my Nas.  That is why I am asking how I can see and access it.

If I can get it to work, next I will try to load the OS onto it, as I would prefer that to the thumb drive.  
I own the full license of Euphony 

 

9 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

Once you install Euphony onto your new hard drive, just make sure you tick share library. It’s got SMB share. So from another pc or laptop. Just mapped a drive with your IP of Euphony. Then drop your music into the mapped drive. Easy as that. 
 

Mapped drive something like

 

\\192.168.1.12\music

 

 

Euphony has it's own File management also if you don't want to use SMB (samba). It's there in the menu but only functional when opened in a browser and not the Euphony App.

 

Also if you want to use SMB to move files around, it's better if the Expert settings LAN speed is set to 1000 rather than the 100 or the copy speed will be too slow. 

[TheAttorney]

On 4/22/2021 at 9:56 PM, edwardsean said:

However, as much as I prize precision, my goal is always a "creamy clarity." In my Dave-based system, 421 is still missing the fullness and fluidity of 102. 421 is smooth, but I still find the sound somewhat tight and small. On balance, 102 is missing 421's focus and is too diffuse, but there is simply this gorgeous analog texture and freedom of flow. It also renders with larger scale and dynamics to my ears.

 

This makes it very tempting to go back to one of those older releases to find out what magic I may be missing. But I hate going backwards and losing functionality.

 

In the meantime, I've made one final isolation tweak to 421 after reflecting on flkin's comment that isolation of systemd process was important in his system. My last settings effectively sacrificed systemd in order to make space for isolating USB IRQ. So this time I shuffled things round a bit so that systemd and USB IRQ each had their own virtual core (at the expense of gstp). With end result:

 

0 systemd 2 nfm 3 dhcpcd 3 dbus-daemon 3 haveged 3 lvmetad 3 avahi-daemon 3 gstp 3-6 stylus 6-7 irq/131 1 irq/135 7

 

And this is the one that I'm sticking with (along with CPU speed reverting back to 1.2GHz) - I'm done with tweaking now and will just enjoy listening to music.

 

So, I'm no longer tempted to try those older releases because I don't feel I have a problem that needs fixing - the clarity/fullness balance seems just fine to me. Onwards and upwards. If Z can re-introduce some of that old magic into a future release then that would be great. In the meantime. I'm perfectly happy with what I've got - no more FOMO for me 🙂.

[flkin]

Here’s an option to stir things up - try no core isolations. With each new Euphony version, I find it’s worth trying. 
 

There’s one isolation I’m thinking that might be significant but has not yet been discussed - the conversion of Flac files (assuming many people store in this format) into WAV before playback. It takes resources and has to be done. Does anyone know which Linux resource this might be? Or perhaps Euphony has already done the conversion before buffering into RAM for playback. 
 

Also in the older versions, I found HQP worked well with Stylus but in the later versions, the focus of the Stylus sound was good enough for me to rely solely on it without further upsampling.

[Pablooo]

I never actually share experiences about sound quality, but thought it was time to get started. Firstly to contribute to this forum (I'm a long time lurker) and secondly to help Euphony get better (I assume Željko reads this forum too 😊).  

I have been playing with Euphony for almost 2 years now. The various updates brought some extra functionality, the sound quality remained more or less the same for me. Until update 216 appeared, it really sounded a lot less like others also experienced here. I recognized the glassy digital sound that some described.  At the time I decided to go back to version 108 and have been very satisfied with the sound ever since. 

I was happy to see a new update arived that may well combine both sound quality and new functionality. I finally found the time to do the update yesterday.  My expectations were not high because I had already read mixed experiences here. My first reaction was that it seemed like a new power cord had been added to my system. This often gives a diffuse stereo image and lack of bass initially until the cable is fully burned in. 

As a test I always play Mark Knopflers Speedway at Nazareth.  I know this number very well and it has helped me evaluate my system over the past 20 years.  All kinds of things happen in the second half of the song, where I listen carefully for the bass extension with the big drums that reach deep without losing the articulation. The latter is not a problem in 421 but the bass seems to have losing a full octave. It makes the music less exciting and somewhat flat. 

The stereo image also seemed to shift, it is not balanced. As if certain instruments or frequencies were more amplified than usual. The holographic image is also less than version 108, where the latter sounds like putting an SR fuse in the dac, version 421 sounds like the standard fuse. After a few hours of listening I went back to version 108, the decline in sq does not outweigh the extra functions such as irq management in my opinion. 

 

So, there it is, my first sq evaluation write up. For now I will wait patiently for the next update 😊

[RickyV]

9 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

 

This makes it very tempting to go back to one of those older releases to find out what magic I may be missing. But I hate going backwards and losing functionality.

 

In the meantime, I've made one final isolation tweak to 421 after reflecting on flkin's comment that isolation of systemd process was important in his system. My last settings effectively sacrificed systemd in order to make space for isolating USB IRQ. So this time I shuffled things round a bit so that systemd and USB IRQ each had their own virtual core (at the expense of gstp). With end result:

 

0 systemd 2 nfm 3 dhcpcd 3 dbus-daemon 3 haveged 3 lvmetad 3 avahi-daemon 3 gstp 3-6 stylus 6-7 irq/131 1 irq/135 7

 

And this is the one that I'm sticking with (along with CPU speed reverting back to 1.2GHz) - I'm done with tweaking now and will just enjoy listening to music.

 

So, I'm no longer tempted to try those older releases because I don't feel I have a problem that needs fixing - the clarity/fullness balance seems just fine to me. Onwards and upwards. If Z can re-introduce some of that old magic into a future release then that would be great. In the meantime. I'm perfectly happy with what I've got - no more FOMO for me 🙂.

 

Quick question, what is your IRQ135 assigned to? My nuc doesn’t have it.

[drjimwillie]

On 4/22/2021 at 4:22 PM, di-fi said:

I recently did the same. 16Gb Optane card + adapter card in only PCIe slot of my (2017) SuperMicro mobo. Euphony will recognize the Optane card and create partitions and install the OS on it. BUT I could not get my system to boot from it (after removing usb drive). I also got in touch with SuperMicro, they confirmed there is no reason it should not work, just let the BIOS know there is a card in PCIe slot.  Please let me know if you get it to work. 

I installed the M.2 drive on the adapter card into the PCIE slot. I used BIOS to assign EFI to that slot and I was able to see the Optane drive in Euphony. I used the euphony utility to copy the OS from the thumb drive onto the Optane. I was not able to boot from it. Even with the help of super micro support, No success. The tech said if the drive did not show up in the boot utility, it was never going to be able to use that drive to boot from. 
The good news is now I will be able to store some music on that 32 Gig Optane drive, the bad news is I have to figure out how to reformat that drive.😳

On 4/23/2021 at 1:37 AM, flkin said:

 

Euphony has it's own File management also if you don't want to use SMB (samba). It's there in the menu but only functional when opened in a browser and not the Euphony App.

 

Also if you want to use SMB to move files around, it's better if the Expert settings LAN speed is set to 1000 rather than the 100 or the copy speed will be too slow. 

where is the information on the euphony file management?
I looked in the user manual and I could not find it.  

I will have to look for a reference on how to use samba. 
I have two euphony servers currently, I was able to see one on the network, but I was not able to get into it even using the password euphony and username Euphony. 

I just put the new Jcat net XE card in my super endpoint. (I am calling it a super endpoint because it was my state of the art server and I am now experimenting with it as an endpoint, using my old CAPS pipeline/ Xeon as the server feeding it, as an experiment. I have it so I thought that I should see what happens if I use it.) The result is that my Crosshair VII with PF ultra clock on MB & PF ultra clock on I2S sounds flat by it’s self, compared to when it is being fed by the Pipeline server.

Even with the new J cat net XE card, files on my NAS sound better than from Qobuz.  
One thing I found interesting the other day was, I was going to install the J cat net Femto card I had removed from my super endpoint into the caps Pipeline server. I was playing a song from my  NAS, loaded into ram for playback. I powered down the Pipeline and the entire album continued to play.  I was assuming when the file was loaded into ram, it was loaded into the ram of the server but obviously I was wrong because it is loading it into the ram of the endpoint.

 

I will have to look at the IRQ to determine this but? I do not use USB, I use I2S from a pinkfaun ultra card and I am wondering how to identify the I RQ and if that should be isolated.

 

thank you

 

[ASRMichael]

32 minutes ago, drjimwillie said:

I installed the M.2 drive on the adapter card into the PCIE slot. I used BIOS to assign EFI to that slot and I was able to see the Optane drive in Euphony. I used the euphony utility to copy the OS from the thumb drive onto the Optane. I was not able to boot from it. Even with the help of super micro support, No success. The tech said if the drive did not show up in the boot utility, it was never going to be able to use that drive to boot from. 
The good news is now I will be able to store some music on that 32 Gig Optane drive, the bad news is I have to figure out how to reformat that drive.😳

where is the information on the euphony file management?
I looked in the user manual and I could not find it.  

I will have to look for a reference on how to use samba. 
I have two euphony servers currently, I was able to see one on the network, but I was not able to get into it even using the password euphony and username Euphony. 

I just put the new Jcat net XE card in my super endpoint. (I am calling it a super endpoint because it was my state of the art server and I am now experimenting with it as an endpoint, using my old CAPS pipeline/ Xeon as the server feeding it, as an experiment. I have it so I thought that I should see what happens if I use it.) The result is that my Crosshair VII with PF ultra clock on MB & PF ultra clock on I2S sounds flat by it’s self, compared to when it is being fed by the Pipeline server.

Even with the new J cat net XE card, files on my NAS sound better than from Qobuz.  
One thing I found interesting the other day was, I was going to install the J cat net Femto card I had removed from my super endpoint into the caps Pipeline server. I was playing a song from my  NAS, loaded into ram for playback. I powered down the Pipeline and the entire album continued to play.  I was assuming when the file was loaded into ram, it was loaded into the ram of the server but obviously I was wrong because it is loading it into the ram of the endpoint.

 

I will have to look at the IRQ to determine this but? I do not use USB, I use I2S from a pinkfaun ultra card and I am wondering how to identify the I RQ and if that should be isolated.

 

thank you

 

Try username audiouser password Euphony 

[mikicasellas]

On 4/22/2021 at 11:04 PM, edwardsean said:

I agree with Topk that preference over builds is going to be somewhat dependent on individual systems, as well as tastes.

 

"It would be fantastic if Željko could give us end-user access to some parameters to tune Euphony in terms of clarity/precision vs. romantic/fullness."

 

I agree and this would be fantastic !!

 

I have been doing A/B with 102 vs 421 and although (at least on my system) 421 is cleaner in presentation i believe it needs more deep in the bass, yes bass is a bit leaner and flat compared to 102

 

My two cents 

[drjimwillie]

I own the full version of Euphony on the pipeline computer and I am running it off a thumb drive. Now that I know that I cannot use the Optane for the OS, I realize that I am having an issue upgrading to the latest OS. 
The manual says to “ complete installation “ but I do not see this as an option. 

What do I do, please?

 

I have the low power NVME SSD From my original pipeline build, with the SOTM SATA filter, I could power it from one of the rails of my HDPlex LPS. But, then I am breaking two rules one using SATA into using SSD.  What would you do?

 

maybe I can buy A used full-size motherboard and CPU to put in my HDPlex H5 case?

[TheAttorney]

 

20 hours ago, flkin said:

Here’s an option to stir things up - try no core isolations. With each new Euphony version, I find it’s worth trying. 

There’s one isolation I’m thinking that might be significant but has not yet been discussed - the conversion of Flac files (assuming many people store in this format) into WAV before playback. It takes resources and has to be done. Does anyone know which Linux resource this might be? Or perhaps Euphony has already done the conversion before buffering into RAM for playback.

I did try no isolation and it sounded fine. TBH any setting sounded much the same on 421, but this could be because I'm getting comparison fatigue, which is another reason for stopping. Nevertheless, my current favourite isolation config still wins out on vividness, where images pop out more clearly from the mix. "No isolation" is softer and more restrained, which of course may be preferable to some depending on personal preference and system synergy.

 

I don't know at what point Euphony does its FLAC expansion, but a while back I did a test comparison of the same file in FLAC and WAV form, and came to the conclusion that I could not reliably tell the difference. I did hear some very subtle differences, but could not consistently state which was which, so this could have just been mind tricks. In short, I felt that FLAC expansion was an area that I did not need to worry about at this point in my hifi journey.

 

14 hours ago, RickyV said:

 

Quick question, what is your IRQ135 assigned to? My nuc doesn’t have it.

This is my WiFi IRQ, so only those using WiFi instead of ethernet will have it. I also have an eth0 IRQ, but it is much less busy so I've not worried about it.

 

12 hours ago, drjimwillie said:

I will have to look at the IRQ to determine this but? I do not use USB, I use I2S from a pinkfaun ultra card and I am wondering how to identify the IRQ and if that should be isolated.

Just hit dot in the core isolation field to display how busy each IRQ is. Then choose the busiest one - it should be very obvious and will be order of magnitudes busier than all the others put together. At least when playing local files.

[di-fi]

On 4/22/2021 at 3:40 PM, ASRMichael said:

Once you install Euphony onto your new hard drive, just make sure you tick share library. It’s got SMB share. So from another pc or laptop. Just mapped a drive with your IP of Euphony. Then drop your music into the mapped drive. Easy as that. 
 

Mapped drive something like

 

\\192.168.1.12\music

 

 

Is that also how you would copy-paste a previous version of Euphony like 102 or 108 into one of the 4 partitions (EUPHONY_SYSTEM)? Or do you need the original Euphony installer files? 
I do not have any Linux knowledge but I also would like to compare in a quick and easy way between more than two versions of Euphony like some of you, but I need some guidance.

I do have different USB thumb drives with 102 and 108 and 117.  
If this goes beyond general interest please pm me. Thanks in advance!

[ASRMichael]

9 hours ago, di-fi said:

Is that also how you would copy-paste a previous version of Euphony like 102 or 108 into one of the 4 partitions (EUPHONY_SYSTEM)? Or do you need the original Euphony installer files? 
I do not have any Linux knowledge but I also would like to compare in a quick and easy way between more than two versions of Euphony like some of you, but I need some guidance.

I do have different USB thumb drives with 102 and 108 and 117.  
If this goes beyond general interest please pm me. Thanks in advance!

Hi

 

I haven't managed to copy partitions, unfortunately!! Maybe someone here who knows Linex well does? Would be good to test 108 with new versions with IRQ. New version with IRQ sounds great to me. IRQ gives you something special that wasn't there before.  

[di-fi]

9 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

Hi

 

I haven't managed to copy partitions, unfortunately!! Maybe someone here who knows Linex well does? Would be good to test 108 with new versions with IRQ. New version with IRQ sounds great to me. IRQ gives you something special that wasn't there before.  

I mentioned copy-paste as an example. Do not know if it even could work. But how do people here in a practical way compare 3 or more different versions of Euphony without going through the whole hassle of a new installation each time? They run each version from thumb drive only? Like stick 102 in , listen, pull out, stick 117 in, pull out, stick 108 in etc. 

For example I have the last version on ssd with reverse option to 108. Standard configuration allows for easy bi-version switch. But how do I add for example 102 to this duo for comparison?
Today we have different users with clearly different preferences. Making OS version changes easy and accessible opens the door to actively using different OS version depending on your mood and/or set up. Who can make it work? Or how did you make it work? 

[ASRMichael]

23 minutes ago, di-fi said:

I mentioned copy-paste as an example. Do not know if it even could work. But how do people here in a practical way compare 3 or more different versions of Euphony without going through the whole hassle of a new installation each time? They run each version from thumb drive only? Like stick 102 in , listen, pull out, stick 117 in, pull out, stick 108 in etc. 

For example I have the last version on ssd with reverse option to 108. Standard configuration allows for easy bi-version switch. But how do I add for example 102 to this duo for comparison?
Today we have different users with clearly different preferences. Making OS version changes easy and accessible opens the door to actively using different OS version depending on your mood and/or set up. Who can make it work? Or how did you make it work? 

Hi no you just can’t copy & paste. Others like you must have usb drives with different versions. You should burn another usb drive & try new version with IRQ and compare against 108. Post your findings here. 

[NanoSword]

With new version 421 the resolution & clarity details is remarkable. I am very satisfied  with natural sound  more than 108 . 

 Image & holographic I feel  it is less than 108. But I care  much about natural so I am very happy with last update . I am sure Z will add something special with new update .

 

 

[di-fi]

1 hour ago, ASRMichael said:

Hi no you just can’t copy & paste. Others like you must have usb drives with different versions. You should burn another usb drive & try new version with IRQ and compare against 108. Post your findings here. 

Thanks and sorry to insist, it's out of curiosity, and maybe one day soon my system will evolve so it becomes practical to know. I understand you have no USB drive. Do you keep more than 2 versions of Euphony on your Optane 32 Gb?